Page 7 of Digital Desire

Aubrey could just make out the man as he moved through the hot jungle towards the bar where her sister was. Bugs and all manner of creepy crawlies bit at her skin as she maintained her position, not wanting to look away in case something happened.

Her sister was young and hot-headed. She was going to get one or both of them killed if she kept on like this. Aubrey knew Madison wanted revenge for what Chopper had done to her, but to come here on her own to try and exact that revenge was fucking foolish at best, at worst, it was suicide.

She was going to get them both killed, apart from the fact that she was now suspended from her job thanks to it all. English had begged her not to go after her sister but how could she not? Ever since they were kids, she and Madison had been close, and she wasn’t about to abandon her now. Moving as silently as she could, Aubrey eased towards the bar that was little more than a shack with all sorts of unsavoury men inside.

Drug lords, gun runners, guerrilla soldiers. These men had no morals, and her sister had taken a job at this dive bar to try and track down Chopper. She saw a man grab her sister over the bar, his sinister smile making her sick as he leered down at her sister’s cleavage.

Bile crawled up her throat and not for the first time she wished she hadn’t done this alone. She knew she could have asked for help from Fortis, but she was still fighting the ridiculous attraction to that tatted-up computer geek, who for some reason thought after one date and a kiss, he owned her body and could go around knocking her out. Just the memory of him doing that made her furious.

What a kiss though. She had spent many nights trying to forget it but found herself reliving it as her body heated with desire. The man was a menace. He was too sexy, too smart, and way too dangerous to her heart. Men like Will Granger had secrets, and they also didn’t settle down. She had no intention of ending up as a notch on the sexy asshole’s bedpost.

So here she was in the Colombian jungle trying to rescue her baby sister on her own with zero resources. She was so engrossed in the man that was now trying to kiss her sister that she never heard the man behind her. Not until it was too late, and a large hand slapped over her mouth, and a cloth bag was thrown over her head. Oh, how she wished she hadn’t been such a wimp and had asked for Fortis’ help.

They quickly and efficiently covered her mouth with duct tape and secured her wrists, while she fought them. She wasn’t helpless and fought with everything she had, using every self-defence lesson she had ever learned through her police training and some she had picked up from Lucy and Emme when she had joined them for a few training sessions. Aubrey quickly realised that it would get her nowhere when she was subdued as if she was a child. She was hoisted over the shoulder of one of the men like a sack of potatoes.

Her cop instincts were on alert though and picking up as many details as she could as they trudged silently through the jungle. The first was that the men, and she guessed men, about four of them were trying not to hurt her. They also weren’t speaking which told her these were not rookies, they were professionals.

She was carried for about five miles while the blood rushed to her head giving her a headache. She put up another token fight and got passed to another man for her trouble.

“Stop fucking around and stay still,” he growled in a low, menacing and somewhat sexy voice, which if she wasn’t mistaken was American. If he hadn’t been her kidnapper, she could have happily listened to him all night. Suddenly they stopped, and she was put on her feet, the man who had held her steadied her before guiding her to sit in a vehicle.

“Step,” he said as he guided her to step up into an SUV. Aubrey felt the others get in and the four doors close before the vehicle started up, and they began to move.

“Take off the bag,” she heard from another man with a British accent. The bag was unceremoniously pulled from her head. Light filtered in and she blinked away the brightness focusing on the back of two heads—one blonde and one brown. Turning she looked at the heavily tattooed but seriously sexy man beside her who winked and grinned.

“Ma’am,” he greeted her.

She scowled at his smirk and turned to look at the man to her left and gasped. “You!”

“Please hold the theatrics for when we see my brother, I have no use for it,” said Jack Granger.

“Wow you really are an asshole, aren’t you?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

He looked her over with disinterest. “Apparently I am,” he stated.

Aubrey watched as he answered a call. His answers were clipped and to the point just like the man himself.

“Why are you here?” she asked a few minutes later when his brief call ended. She thought Jack wasn’t going to answer her as he looked through his phone reading something.

He looked up, and she was caught in the swirling brown depths of his eyes that held anger and annoyance. “To stop my brother from getting himself killed for a woman who doesn’t give a shit about him.”

“Will is here?” she asked as butterflies took flight in her tummy.

“Yes. He thinks he’s going to rescue you, but he’s more likely to get himself killed.”

Aubrey felt outraged with the way Jack spoke about Will. “Hey, don’t talk about him that way. He may not be all brawn and badass like you, but he is sweet and kind and so clever,” she started and then stopped herself at the chuckle from the front of the car.

Her eyes caught those of the driver. “Will is very badass, and he’s also extremely brawn now, honey. Our boy grew up and got himself some guns to go with his tatts.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter because Will and I are nothing to each other, we are friends at best.”

“You defend all your friends like that?” Jack asked, and she went silent knowing her defence of Will had given her away. “Um,” he said.

She bit her tongue from asking what that meant, but it came out anyway. “What does um mean asshole?”

“Maybe I was wrong about you.”

“Yeah well, I was right about you. You are an asshole.”